The drain-question is too serious to be resigned to the doubtful integrity of builders or the bungling workmanship of ignorant plumbers. It should be studied, and mastered, by every householder on whom the health and lives of others depend, for the ventilation of the drains is of more consequence than that of any room, because they are often hermetically sealed up, and then the smallest escape of the evil gases, generated by this sealing, means death.

Ventilating pipes to the topmost point of the roof are of the first importance to a healthy house, until the circular road of progress brings us back, as it threatens to do, to the old-fashioned system of open drains along the street. Alas! the negligence of one's neighbour may be as fatal to one's own child as negligence at home; and it will be a red-letter day when the measures discussed by the Public Health Conference in June 1880 for competent sanitary inspection and insurance (sic) of all dwellings, receive the sanction of the Legislature. Mr. C. N. Cresswell proposes to classify all dwellings and grant certificates of sanitary efficiency in much the same way as Lloyd's Association grants certificates of the sea-worthiness of vessels for the mercantile marine. Why something of the kind has not been arranged long ago is the natural question. Private persons have indeed in rare cases insisted upon a sanitary certificate with their houses, renewable from time to time; but such precautions among a few are of little real value, since one's neighbour's sins are as dangerous as one's own.

The organisation of County Boards for the furtherance of this object and the formation of public opinion strong enough to check the interested opposition on the part of owners of property is but a matter of time. Every one of us may add his mite of pressure in a movement so vital to the interests of those we love.

I am glad to hear that a number of distinguished scientific men have already been elected on the Honorary Council of the proposed Sanitary Assurance Society, recently provisionally approved by the Board of Trade; among them Professors Tyndall and Frankland.